Required Stanford writing courses range from how 'ICE raids destabilize communities,' to an all-male drag ballet

A series of spring 2026 required writing courses for students at Stanford University have students learn about topics ranging from “biracial and bicultural identity,” to how “ICE raids destabilize communities.”  

Standord’s Program in Writing and Rhetoric (PWR) currently offers courses to students to fulfill a “Writing and Rhetoric Requirement at Stanford.” 

In a description for the program, the university states that “PWR instructors in PWR 1 and PWR 2 courses carefully design their courses to offer in-depth intellectual experiences based on shared assignments, goals, and learning outcomes.”

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For each course that is offered to students, they are “rooted in analysis, research, and the presentation of research in various forms,” while professors are given authority to “[build] on this shared core, designing class activities to support a dynamic, interactive classroom community.”

For the courses advertised on Stanford’s website as being offered, they range from meeting only once a week, to meeting twice a week, with total time per class session being 1 hour and 50 minutes. 

One course, entitled “Language, Identity, and Power,” the course description describes that students will learn about the “role of language(s) across communities and within our own, examining how language intersects with our identities and histories.”

The course description adds that students will “explore this intersection across spheres such as politics, education, medicine, and media spaces, intertwined with forces like globalization, immigration, and the rapid development of new technologies.”

Another course, “Our Future is Each Other: Collaborative Rhetorics,” outlines that students will work with “Course texts [that] will engage with a diversity of cultural practices and rhetorics.” 

Students in the course will also examine an essay “on the all-male ballet drag toupe, Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.” 

Other courses set to be offered in spring 2026 also have a focus on race. 

Amongst the listed course offerings includes one course on “Writing Mixed Race Identity,” where students will “look at the ongoing rhetoric surrounding multiraciality.” Students will also learn about how “mixed race people are always and already politicized,” and are “represented as figures of shame,” “exoticism,” “tragedy,” and as figures of “post-racial utopia.” 

“Ethnic Narratives and the Rhetoric of American Identity” is another course being offered where students will encounter reading that “will address various topics such as biracial and bicultural identity, acculturation, stereotyping and self-image.” 

That course will “explore how race and ethnicity in America have become subjects of personal negotiations and public perception.”

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In one course on “The Rhetoric of Bearing Witness,” students will “develop research projects exploring different forms of bearing witness, asking questions such as how the medium and context of a witness account influence its impact.”

The course description emphasizes journalistic reporting, where the description includes a quote about George Floyd, and explicitly mentions the “importance of recording eyewitness accounts, whether in Gaza, from Holocaust survivors, or when ICE raids destabilize communities.”

Campus Reform has contacted Stanford University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.